The plush rec room in Questlove’s Manhattan apartment tower is full to brimming. Over by the open kitchen is Olivia Wilde in a Stella McCartney bomber jacket, chatting with Chris Rock. By the swimming pool are Rosario Dawson and Jimmy Fallon. There at a cocktail table is Matt Lauer. And Pharrell. Chefs—Kwame Onwuachi of the late Shaw Bijou in D.C., Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy on the Lower East Side, and Bryce Shuman of New York’s recently departed Betony—compose bites of crab with uni, carrot sliders, and tête de cochon. Misty Copeland stands by the window in a canary-yellow dress and four-inch heels like a mystical bird guarding downtown Manhattan at dusk.

Towering above everyone is Questlove, né Ahmir Thompson, ever recognizable in the extravagant Afro he’s had since he was a child. He’s dressed in his uniform: a black hoodie, custom-made black jeans, Nike high-tops, and a Dee and Ricky Lego brooch. Questlove is, of course, cofounder and drummer of the Roots; musical director of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; Hamilton Mixtape producer; and DJ for everyone from the San Francisco 49ers to Balenciaga to the Clinton Global Initiative to the Golden Globes. His position in the food world is more nebulous—he’s part impresario, part creativity evangelist, part entrepreneur. Whatever he is finds its expression in these high-wattage culinary jam sessions.

He calls them salons, a quaint, Enlightenment-era term that he deploys with some irony. You might call them dinner parties, but that misses their accessibility and unaffected exuberance. His ascension to a place where chefs such as Daniel Humm, David Chang, and Dominique Ansel value his culinary opinion—and moreover consider him one of them—is, for lack of a better term, a little weird. He doesn’t cook. “No, no, I’m a very good eater,” he explains when I make my way to him through the crowd. “Except, actually, for carrots and beets,” he adds, as we taste Amanda Cohen’s carrot sliders. “Which I didn’t like until tonight. But now I’m converted.”

Nor is Questlove a restaurateur, though he briefly owned a very good fried-chicken stand at the Chelsea Market with Philadelphia restaurant scion Stephen Starr. And he isn’t a food journalist, though last year he wrote a cerebral romp through culinary creativity called Something to Food About (Clarkson Potter), and he’s developing a documentary on black chefs with W. Kamau Bell.

What Questlove is, in a traditionally parochial, rule-bound, white field (has there been #gastronomysowhite yet?), is a glimmer of a better future. Around Questlove, hierarchies dissolve. The salons are notable for their mix of colors, ages, occupations, and there is an almost palpable absence of ego. That’s part of the point. “Nobody here has status above another person,” he says. To be sure, his guests are mostly celebrities (not all; there is a token segment of civilians, like me), but they’re the celebrities one tends to fantasize less about being than having as friends. Questlove strikes me as that rare breed in preadolescence—the cool kid who makes schoolyard life harmonious. Fallon agrees with me. “Questlove has this childlike innocence. When we booked Phil Collins, he sent me a text, freaking out. It’s that level of excitement.”

It helps that Questlove has star power enough on his own—and is such a serious artist—that chefs know their fame isn’t what attracts him. “Questlove isn’t trying to join a club,” says Wylie Dufresne. “He’s genuinely excited about what we’re serving—but he also contributes. He adds to the conversation.” Part of that contribution is bringing exposure to chefs who don’t look like Jacques Pépin and Alain Ducasse. “I don’t think he’s playing with favoritism in terms of color,” says Onwuachi. “But he is aware. He makes it easier for me to get on the radar. He’s saying: ‘Where are the African-American chefs out there?’ He can identify with me, and that helps.”

When I meet Questlove a few weeks after the salon, backstage at The Tonight Show, he’s with his friend Lin-Manuel Miranda, here from SNL. They talk in the half sentences of a married couple. “You know,” Lin says to him as Questlove mulls something over, “you look just like Stephen Sondheim when you scratch your chin.” Questlove lets out a characteristic half-snort, half-chortle, and the two huddle over rare R&B 45s that Questlove’s buyer has found at a dealer in Pennsylvania. Eventually Questlove’s assistant tears him away. We have a reservation at Sushi Seki on First Avenue.

Fallon told me that Questlove is the most fun person in the world to eat with. But I find myself nervous. Questlove was inspired to write Something to Food About after a visit to Jiro Ono’s famous sushi counter in Tokyo, and a number of his press photos show him with chopsticks and nigiri in hand. I needn’t have worried. He has an immediate, unforced way of putting one at ease. It starts when we both order an elaborately described rice beer called Koshihikari Echigo, which we taste. “Really?” Questlove asks, raising his eyebrows conspiratorially above his thick-rimmed glasses—of which, by the way, he has 600 pairs. I offer that Koshihikari Echigo tastes like Bud Light. “Oh!” he exclaims. “Is this what Bud Light tastes like?”

Questlove wants chutoro (medium fatty tuna). I hazard a preference for otoro (the fattiest and by most standards, the best). “You know, let’s settle this,” he says. He suggests an A-B comparison, which lasts five or six rounds—I lose count—and quickly devolves into the kind of digressive conversation one has with an old friend. Which is the best brand of earplugs? Is Pluto a planet? How many episodes of Soul Train has he yet to watch? He draws comparisons between chefs and underground rappers. “Dominique Crenn,” he says (of Atelier Crenn and Petit Crenn in San Francisco). “Dominique is like, ‘How can I provoke? How can I move you?’ ” We talk about Cronuts—he’s a fan—and the fact that he first tasted wine at 23. We consume great quantities of very expensive, delicious tuna. For the record, Questlove is right about chutoro.

Born to musician parents in Philadelphia, Questlove was drumming at two. He played Radio City Music Hall with his parents’ band, Lee Andrews and the Hearts, at eleven. He and his high school friend—kind of friend, kind of frenemy—Black Thought (a.k.a. Tariq Trotter) formed the Roots in 1987, at the Fame-like Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts in South Philly. (A bit of hip-hop trivia: The band’s early name was the Square Roots, which is charmingly nineties nerdy.) Questlove has a collection of 80,000 records whose tracks he can recite at will.

When did he turn his attention to food? It happened when his love of music dimmed. “I had a good fifteen-year period with hip-hop, when it was upping the ante all the time,” he says. But at some point, “I traded in the romance of music for the technicality of music.” He references John Coltrane to explain: “A lot of people hear A Love Supreme and they have an epiphany. But I hear it now and I wonder what the mic setup was. It’s become technical for me.” His tone is slightly forlorn. “I’m the only person I know who likes the engine better than the car. But now, food is the thing that inspires my utter elation. You ever see the baby elephant discover the ocean?” (I have, on YouTube, as has much of the rest of the world. Several times.) “That’s me with food.”

It’s not as if he didn’t love eating before. When he was growing up, preparations for a Sunday meal at his grandmother’s house—“the most exquisite soul-food dinner ever”—were a four-day affair, beginning on Thursday mornings. “They would make this cake soaked in brandy, which took a few days. Saturday afternoon they soaked black-eyed peas. By the end of Saturday night they’d finally finished.” Monday was earmarked for dishwashing.

“It was also probably food that helped the Roots cross over,” Questlove says. Twenty years ago, when the Roots were still Philadelphia-based, their manager, Richard Nichols, decided the band needed to cultivate a tribe of like-minded collaborators and fans—today we have Swifties and the Beyhive, but these were A Tribe Called Quest days, and one’s tribe made music as well as listened to it. Nichols persuaded Geffen Rec­ords to add a personal chef to the band’s budget. That chef, pilfered from a posh Philadelphia jazz club, cooked—sometimes for hours—while the Roots hosted five- and ten-hour jam sessions, originally at Questlove’s Philadelphia house. These evolved into the famous Black Lily jam sessions, where Macy Gray, Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys, and many more went to practice and collaborate, eventually leading to at least ten record deals. “There had been nowhere for the neo-soul–hip-hop movement to get together,” Questlove tells me. “Jill Scott, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Musiq Soulchild, Freeway . . . they were all there.” His food salons, he says, “are what those jam sessions were in 1997.”

We have a second dinner reservation—at Carbone, Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone’s temple to veal Parmesan—but we feel lazy and disinclined to head all the way downtown. We decide instead to relocate to Cipriani, a celebrity clubhouse a few blocks away not known for its food. “Their rigatoni is good, ” Questlove assures me. “We’re fine with that or the ravioli.” We enter, some time around 9:30, to a chorus of “Questlove!” Spike Lee’s wife, Tonya, is finishing dinner with a retinue of powerful women in suits. After much hugging and kissing, we sit, and Questlove jokes he’s surprised we’re let in without a booking. “I mean, the Clooneys really like it here,” he says. “I’m just the most celebrated second banana. I’m Tariq’s partner. I’m Jimmy’s second banana. I hide behind a drum set. I hide behind a DJ booth.” The truth is Questlove has any ear he wants. Our conversation turns to the astrological possibility of a thirteenth zodiac sign (Ophiuchus the serpent). “I have to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson about that,” he says. For help scrambling an egg? “Chang or Ansel,” he says. When he is in Minnesota, he goes cereal shopping at the General Mills factory. His favorite sneakers are a pair of Yeezys sent to him by Kanye with a note: “From K West 2 Quest.”

The only subjects we don’t broach during our night on the town are race and politics. I know how politically active he is—he worked on both of President Obama’s election campaigns and makes pointed comments on social media about racial profiling, President Trump, and LGBTQ rights. As a food writer whose work rarely covers any more sensitive topics than whether shrimp should be peeled, then cooked, or cooked, then peeled, I don’t know quite how to steer the conversation in that direction.

But when we meet a few days later at his apartment, where his personal chef makes me a salad of Bushwick-grown arugula with Shishito peppers, grilled pears, and citrus dressing, I do my best. I’ve read that Questlove has been pulled over at least 20 times for Driving While Black—including the night before he won a Grammy. He got a car and driver because so many cabs were turning him down. Once, he had to fit his six-foot-four-inch frame into a pedicab to get from a Roots rehearsal to The Tonight Show because no cab would take him.

I ask if he sees himself as an instrument of change. “Dude,” he answers, “I don’t even believe I have impact in my own field.” At the same time, he’s actively working for greater equality in food access. He recounts having learned, years ago, from Magic Johnson that when Johnson opened a TGI Fridays in Harlem, it was the only place that you could get a fresh salad within a fifteen-block radius. To that end, he joined the advisory board of the Edible Schoolyard NYC, whose goal is food education in inner-city schools. Kate Brashares, executive director of Edible Schoolyard, tells me, “He’s the real deal. He really understands the importance of getting healthy, delicious food to everyone.” She adds, “He’s opened doors to us we never could have opened without him.” Some of that may be the color of his skin. Some is Questlove’s talent for collecting ideas and people to the mutual benefit of both. He tells me he loves that Daniel Patterson and Roy Choi opened LocoL in the middle of Watts. It’s a direction he can see himself taking, though he can’t say how yet. He can say, with characteristic humility, that he’s starting small. “I’m going to do the documentary about black chefs and hopefully expose some people and start some scholarship programs to culinary schools.” His approach is shaped by a lesson he learned from President Obama: “You’ve got to believe in small. No pebble splash starts with the outer ripple.” When he teaches classes about Prince at NYU—he’s also a professor—he likes to limit the number of students to nineteen so that he can connect with each. “I mean, right now,” he says, “before I go in the grave, I feel like if I can really affect the course of 20 people’s lives. . . maybe 50, then I’ve succeeded.”

Questlove’s food salons play a growing role in his activism. He’s planning one in Washington, D.C., in honor of Earth Day, which will be, rather pointedly, at the home of George Washington University’s president, across the street from the White House. The one I most recently attend here in New York has a social-justice theme. The Food Policy Action Education Fund’s anti-hunger campaign, Food Is Fuel, shares billing with Hugh Acheson’s lamb with fava beans and Tom Colicchio’s smoked monkfish. On a cocktail table near a bar serving cognac and gin concoctions by Nitecap’s Natasha David, guests write anti-hunger slogans on paper plates (Food is fuel for my family; Food is fuel for my mind) and photograph them. Minton’s Joseph “JJ” Johnson—whose upgrading of the junk-food classic Frito pie is a masterwork of rice and cassava chips, peanut sauce, braised goat, and edamame beans in a bespoke Mylar bag— is here for his culinary cachet and his food-justice work. JJ is an adviser to the Food Bank for New York City. Once a week, the Minton’s staff feeds the 89 tenants of a nonprofit that houses the homeless in the building above the Harlem restaurant.

And yet: The night isn’t heavy with the cause. Champagne and cognac flow. Guests gather around the chefs and cluck and ooh. “You, the chef, are really the star of this show,” Johnson tells me in a kind of daze. “It’s this no-judge zone, too, where everyone really cares about food in a cool way. Plus, Tom Colicchio helped me plate.”

As we stand by the open kitchen, surveying the chefs and guests—an astoundingly beautiful crowd, in every hue, of every age, all talking about food—Questlove tells me his new obsession is Impossible burgers, which are faithful simulacra of meat made from plants. I tell him I haven’t tasted them yet, and he shakes his head and grips my arm. “Dude, you’re going to freak out. You will not be able to tell the difference between it and a burger!” He tells me about “the blood element”—which makes the wheat protein, coconut oil–and–soy based burger juicy, like . . . meat. He’s investigated the soy content. “It’s low,” he tells me. “Because I worry about soy.” Questlove tells me that Impossible meat is going to be a big deal. “It literally addresses all the problems we have.” The environmental cost of animal farming, endemic health problems, hunger.